The day said I am woman.” This lovely image may be of a women’s march and the joy of it. “And there were women everywhere across the land, children women, and girl women and they women and fluid women and men who were women and boy women and women from the past on the tongues of mind & ear and images of women everywhere: ancestor women. Like a free-wheeling trip through Dante’s Inferno, this book leads us through the spiritual world, deconstructing myths and juxtaposing them in newly meaningful contexts.The second poem, “denouement,” is a sequence of prose poems that begins with a quote from Gertrude Stein on “Patriarchal Poetry.” The second prose poem suggests that one should resist, ward off, deflect, exorcise, and defy. She urges us to “muscle up,” let go of fear, and get in touch with female power. “Feminism is an old mistress to make you think,” she says, as we travel in and out of many universes with her. Waldman asks us to acknowledge frailty as well as power and the many masks we wear. Waldman’s impassioned outcries recall Emily Dickinson’s poem “Madness Is Divinest Sense.” Like a free-wheeling trip through Dante’s Inferno, this book leads us through the spiritual world, deconstructing myths and juxtaposing them in newly meaningful contexts. Or Lady Midnight’s Songs of the Four Seasons In one stanza, she calls out with vast scope in quick succession, The effect of her poetry is amplified by her performance, but these poems also dart with great vitality on the page. These devices are parts of the oral tradition that she performs with great gusto. Waldman often uses a series of pronouncements, in the form of chants and repetition, so that the poems have an incantatory and incendiary quality. The poem conjures what she calls “the demon feminine,” as she challenges the notion of being a victim or a plaything. She directs her poem to “sister,” as well as “dear suffragette.” One way is to communicate with spirits and “start a spirit fire.” The strategy, she says, is to know “the trick o’ death” and escape the world’s violence. Waldman’s voice, with its mind leaps and often non-linear movement from thought to thought, stanza to stanza, reverberates as the urgency of a wise woman and teacher in a perilous time. The poem speaks to a “dear suffragette,” whom she advises to “outlast the misogynist” and “fend off patriarchal poetry.” “trick o’ death,” the poem that begins the collection, addresses all readers and particularly those fighting for women’s rights. Two of them, including the title poem, are noted to be part of the ongoing Iovis project, Book IV. This volume contains 19 poems of varying lengths and styles. She does so, drawing on a wide range of historical, religious, and mythological references, including Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, and Native American cultures, and both Eastern and Western religious traditions. She calls urgently for deeper inspection and introspection concerning traditional values, social change, and gender relationships, including a reassessment of women’s roles and women’s empowerment. Her words, like “talismans,” seek to “shake the cosmos.” Anne Waldman’s voice is powerful, iconic, and revolutionary.
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